Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

and there's a difference between both those things and not caring

and as far as compassion, I'm showing exactly the amount of compassion toward myself as others generally show toward other people who have done something wrong

Giving a fuck about something requires time and effort that in many cases is often better spent elsewhere – on more ethically pressing matters, for instance. It is impossible for a human being to give an equal amount of fucks about everything, unless you believe yourself to be some kind of omniscient deity.

there may be a subjective difference between not caring and caring ineffectually, but what is the value of caring ineffectually if it gives you grief and is done mainly in order to avoid the self-perception (or perception by others) of not caring at all? no one is ultimately counseling you to not care at all, just to not care where doing so can accomplish nothing. that still leaves open the wide range of possibilities involved in caring in ways that matter!

as someone who has struggled with similar issues (to a lesser degree), I offer this. Many of the types of stories that are making national news today would have been regional news only, and some regional stories wouldn't have been stories. the speed in which news travels and the state boundaries that social media removes has flooded the internet with more stories and causes than one could take in during a lifetime.

when it comes to "caring", the internal feelings you have on most issues impact nobody, unless you're in a position to take action and your internal feelings cause you to act, or not to act. For example, if I witnessed somebody striking their significant other, and I somehow was not moved by that scene and I just kept going about my business and didn't call the police...yes, that would be fucked up. But only because my lack of empathy influenced my actions, or lack thereof.

However, if I wasn't actually present at the scene, and instead I read an article indicating a man I didn't know beat his girlfriend, and for whatever reason, it didn't cause an emotional reaction in me...that person isn't going to be negatively impacted by my lack of reaction to the story. Obviously if NOBODY had an emotional reaction to the story, that would be bad, but the chances of that are low, as this person would likely have friends and family members, colleagues etc that would show up to their rescue.

Obviously, it's important to keep up with worldly events, and to care about things, including things that don't directly affect you. I read a lot about the Bolsonaro and Orban regimes because of my concerns with how the far-right is infecting Europe as well as the United States. But you're always going to have blind spots. Either because you don't have enough time in the day, you have your own life concerns to deal with, or you just don't come across something. Somebody whose father is dying in the hospital might not be as prone to keep apprised of world events, because their parent is their world at that point in time.

I think you're interpreting "not caring" as saying "this issue isn't important and nobody should care about it", when it's more like "I'm not that familiar with this thing" or "as of right now, I haven't engaged with this issue enough for it to register with me". Human trafficking IS bad, yes - and if you were aware of a human trafficking ring and did nothing to report it, yes, that would be bad. But when it's an almost 40-year old story that you weren't previously familiar with, you don't have to go from not knowing about the issue to suddenly being passionate about it and sharing your opinion internet-wide in a mere 5 minutes. In fact, nothing requires you to engage with it at all, and not engaging with it doesn't mean you don't care about the victims of human trafficking or that you're in favor of human trafficking. It just means you're a human being and you can't possibly react to every single things that happens.

Some people will argue vehemently online about the issue to where you think you're in the wrong for not having their level of passion about it. But this isn't a blind spot for them. It's a blind spot for you. And chances are, there's a cause you feel passionately about that they either don't have much of an opinion on, or know anything about.

Likewise, some Twitter folk might dial it up a notch and suggest you're a bad person if you don't share their opinion or have an opinion on the issue. Well - so what? Unless you're Catholic, nobody's going to be tallying up on a scorecard whether you're a 'good' or 'bad' person, and even 'good' people do 'bad' things now and then. and those people who are wracked with guilt over being a "bad" person generally....aren't the "bad" people, who usually don't worry about such things.

Unless you give weight to those people's judgments and believe them to have merit, they have no power over you. If you feel the need to constantly meet the approval of strangers, and argue your side with them in hopes that you win their approval, you've essentially given these people control over you. and then you can wind up gaslighting yourself (as I often do to myself), questioning your own core values. And frequently needing validation or "permission" to say and do things....from people you'll never meet.

sometimes, you'll learn things from other people and change your beliefs/behaviors, and that's great. but there's a difference between that, and wanting to feel "approved" of by your immediate environment at all times, whether we're talking the physical world or the internet. And it won't happen. Chances are, at any time, a feeling or a belief you have is going to generate negative feelings in someone you know. And many beliefs are just those, beliefs. Not universal truths.

for example, I got into a fight with a 15-year friend last week. I had gotten angry after I went to Publix and once again saw 40% of the store not wearing masks, and I went on a rant about how after more than a month, there was no excuse for it, and that it was sending a bad message to those at the store. This friend, who has often complained about my political posts (even though he could very easily just "unfollow" me which he has done many times), blew up, saying I was basically calling him out for not wearing a mask to Publix that day, and that I was acting like I was "better than everybody else".

I found myself immediately reacting to his disapproval with revulsion, like I needed to correct it, but before I could be conciliatory, I stopped myself, and said to myself that I didn't feel I was wrong. I still responded more weakly to him than I would have liked, stating that I am sorry if he felt personally attacked, but I was clearly talking about the collective inaction of non-mask wearers and not specific individuals, and that I was upset because this puts me at greater risk of transmitting it to my father after going to the grocery store. and he responded snottily saying I had anger issues (a nice bit of irony since he has gone to therapy for that himself).

my mood was temporarily ruined because someone I cared about felt disappointment/disapproval with me, and I took down the offending post, and replaced it with a new snarky one (that I hid him from seeing) stating "here is my inoffensive, content free FB post". other friends, knowing why I had done that, called me out for being too afraid to speak my mind and use my voice, simply because I was viciously challenged by a friend. and they were right. I immediately regretted taking down the post, but I thought to myself and realized I was angry at the friend for not only obtusely missing the point of what I wrote, but for his constant attempts to police what kinds of content I share (i.e. not just unfollowing me, but PMing me to condescendingly tell me things like he's "worried about me as a friend" and that I 'Need to stop posting inflammatory things like this'). So instead of responding to his shitty message, I didn't talk to him for two days. I went about my business and didn't worry myself about pleasing the fucker. it felt pretty good. I didn't feel his judgment because I took back the power from him. now, I'm still not 100% thrilled with the weak way I responded to him, and still need to address long-term some of the shit I"m not "ok" with, but it's a start.

anyway....I'm with Aimless and j on this one, as well as pomentul...and Granny.

*Many of the types of stories that are making national news today would have been regional news only, and some regional stories wouldn't have been stories decades ago

i thought that was a good post neanderthal.

this article is relevant to this discussion, but i didn't vet the author's parents who may or may not be involved in crimes so use your best judgement:

https://www.bookforum.com/print/2702/the-self-conscious-drama-of-morality-in-contemporary-fiction-24022

uuugh lauren oyler is just a bad writer

i'm a bad person, that's why i posted it

you're not! she just has bad ideas and conveys them poorly

i was joking but ty.

maybe so, i've never heard of her, but the article is mostly a series of relevant observations on contemporary lit

https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-to-disguise-his-horns

Karl Ove Knausgaard writes in volume five of his series of autofictional novels My Struggle, in a representative passage. “I had to stop being a coward, stop being evasive and vague, I had to be honest, upright, clear, sincere.” In the next volume his best friend, Geir, jokingly calls him “a bad person . . . one of the few true narcissists” while discussing the uncle Karl Ove has angered by writing his books.

NOW WAIT A MOMENT

Ottessa Moshfegh’s novels are an exception that proves the rule: Praised for their portrayal of “unlikable” women, a feminist and therefore moral project, they’re often narrated by a person who seems to be taunting the reader with her awareness of her own badness.

i'm not a huge moshfegh fan but surely there is more going on than this

The shift to socially conscious art and criticism Molly Fischer termed “the Great Awokening” has meant most books are judged on everything except aesthetic terms

citation needed

i could go on but i won't

I think both the Aeon article and the Oyler article are pretty weak btw

(xp: ye, the second sentence BradNelson quoted is the one that jumped out at me from the Oyler -- this is an assertion people reflexively emit again and again but it just.... doesn't seem to have any relation to the way I actually see books out in the world being judged, praised, sold)

i just think any discussion of a topic like that of our ilx's katherine will need the distinction between morality and moralizing at some point.

The distinction is real, and neither of these two articles do a good job of making it (only the second really tries)

And though she occasionally makes mistakes—cheats on her boyfriend, offends her friends after drinking too much, doesn’t call her mom very often—she admits them.

what is a good person? someone who has the correct politics on social media even if their offline actions include infidelity, indulgence to the pt of cruelty and alienation from their family.

I mean, that's what the article wants you to think some unspecified cabal of people in charge of our culture insists, yes.

But that is not a stance you will find in either of those Lerner novels, the Jenny Offill book, or How Should A Person Be?.

i don't think the author wants you to think the person in the first paragraph is a secret bad person - they probably think the composite is reasonable for the social mores of the day (at least of a certain set)

it’s hard to tell one way or the other bc it’s not well-written

Yes, looking at it again, I feel like there is just something fundamentally disorganized in Oyler's writing. It's not clear to me what she means to say about e.g. Sheila Heti. I felt the same about her review of Tolentino's book -- each paragraph read like something that was saying something but I could never actually get it to cohere into something but a sensation of complaint.

I do think that when a clear assertion emerges it is, like "The shift to socially conscious art and criticism Molly Fischer termed “the Great Awokening” has meant most books are judged on everything except aesthetic terms," incompatible with my experience.

She's probably a good person though

The fact that I'm spending my time engaging with this is presumably a sign I'm cut out for social media

my stance against reading articles continues to pay dividends

the aeon one is almost unreadable

The fact that I'm spending my time engaging with this is presumably a sign I'm cut out for social media

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, May 27, 2020 8:33 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

is it weird that i think the same fact about me means i'm not cut out for social media at all

my stance against reading articles continues to pay dividends

― silby, Wednesday, May 27, 2020 11:36 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

was waiting for this post

you're both right! that's the paradox of being cut out for social media xp

what if... social media is cut out for us

I think the Aeon one is trying to say that 'virtue signalling is bad not good' (if anyone needed a tl;dr, there it is).

my stance against reading articles continues to pay dividends

― silby, Wednesday, May 27, 2020 11:36 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

was waiting for this post

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, May 27, 2020 8:41 AM (five minutes ago)

:*

what i got out of the laura oyster article is here are some examples of how authors' novels were shaped in various ways by the depiction of anxiety about being a "good person" which is triangulated according to an acute self-awareness that their morality will be judged widely and visibly by their audience on social media

this is actually a perfect example but not for the reasons claimed it is; after reading the article my basic stance was "this was a decent article, I'm glad I read it, I should look up some of those other books," but now I am questioning that stance because it does not seem to be aligned with the correct one, nor do I trust that I'm right

What do you think?

I don't fucking know because what I think is apparently the wrong thing

yr ego balloon needs inflating!

I don't think "how should a person be" (apparently discussed in the article I won't read) is written in the context of social media scrutiny at all!

katherine I definitely recommend all the Ben Lerner novels and both Jenny Offill novels and How Should A Person Be? because they are all funny and good. Probably Motherhood is good too, it's on my shelf and I just haven't gotten to it yet. I think the things this article is concerned about are most present in The Topeka School, which, perhaps not by coincidence, is the least successful of Lerner's books, I would start with 10:04 (or, better, How Should A Person Be?, which is just wonderfully and radically its own thing, and when you are trapped in a social-media-mediated self-consciousness spiral the best prescription is a radically alternate perspective)

Motherhood is really good too! It's sort of secretly about the Holocaust though.

Leaving the Atocha Station is no less apposite to this discussion and very much worth everyone's time as well.

I've read most of those except the ben lerner

Oh sorry for wrongly imagining otherwise!

If you've read all those books and thought the Oyler was on point maybe it's me who's missing it!

glad some ppl think it's funny to ask if Ammonium Nitrate would be a great metal band name the day after Beirut.

was unusually dickish to this person cos it was in poor taste

I hate when you notice you have less mutual friends than before with someone because it means nearly always someone has removed you and even though you know logically that it doesn't mean anything, it still stings your ego a bit. I like to think that I'm not so unlikable that my mere online presence (which can be muted) is so unpleasant. OTOH these days I only seem to share pro-feminism and pro-trans rights articles I've enjoyed reading, so maybe it's for the best these people remove themselves from my social media circles

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/onlyfans-to-block-sexually-explicit-videos-starting-in-october

if i were smarter and knew how to program, launching an onlyfans knockoff that is JUST explicit video seems like a goldmine